The outgoing Chief Justice of Barbados is about to leave office with the court system still grappling with an alarmingly high backlog of cases, prompting him to urge collaboration on revising procedures to radically overhaul the failing structure.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Court-Annexed Mediation Workshop hosted by the Supreme Court and the Barbados Bar Association on Monday, Sir Patterson Cheltenham warned that “our clearance rate of cases is troublingly low”.
“It is disturbingly evident that in civil/commercial matters, our clearance rate will guarantee, I repeat, will guarantee that we have an ever-accumulating backlog of cases. Simple fact. I am not here to attribute blame, but I think we need to pause,” added Sir Patterson who will demit office on May 15.
He revealed that upon assuming office in 2020, he sought assistance from the regional Judicial Reform and Institutional Strengthening (JURIST) Project to undertake a detailed analysis of case processing in the island’s court system.
Although the analysis covered only the period from 2017 to 2021, the report presented was critical of the judicial system’s subpar performance, even by international standards, according to the chief justice.
Quoting directly from the report, Sir Patterson stated: “The average hearing that a civil/commercial matter takes is deeply troubling reading; in 2017, 1 361 cases were filed, the matters that were completed in that period, let’s treat that period as a year or so, 290. So the clearance rate was 21 per cent. The average hearings per disposition – the number of times you go to court – 27.88.
“In 2018, 1314 cases were filed; matters disposed, 258; percentage clearance rate, 19.63; average hearings per disposition, 30.88. So we are not clearing, then we are going to court frequently.”
The outgoing chief justice provided similar figures for subsequent years, highlighting the distressingly low clearance rates and high number of hearings per case disposition.
While the clearance rate for family court proceedings averaged 68.11 per cent with an average of 10.42 hearings per disposition during the same period, Cheltenham stressed that the data summary for civil and commercial proceedings should be deeply concerning to all judicial stakeholders.
“You don’t need to get confused by the data, it’s scary. Matters go into the court system and they never seem to come out, and we go to court frequently. The question is, ‘to do what?’” he said.
“Without in any manner trying to confuse, I wanted to give you an accurate assessment and feel for the tardy manner by which matters progress through the court system and are ultimately resolved.”
Sir Patterson, who has been vocal about the need to significantly reduce the backlog within the courts, stressed the need for a thorough revamp of the judicial framework to better meet the needs of all interested parties.
“The accepted clearance to ensure that a court is not accumulating a backlog of cases is to clear/dispose of at least as many cases as has been filed/reopened/reactivated in a period, by having a clearance rate of 100 per cent or higher. That’s the consultant’s report and I agree with it,” he said.
The chief justice stressed that radical measures must be taken, including a “fundamental reorganisation” of the Registration Department and deploying more management-centric personnel.
“This is a reengineering process, the outlines of which have already started, but it needs to have a team dedicated solely to that mission, and it is urgent,” he insisted. (SB)
